


Just a Taste

by Catznetsov



Series: Trio 'verse [4]
Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Intersex, M/M, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Non-Traditional Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Phone Sex, Polyamory, Pre-Poly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-27
Updated: 2018-08-27
Packaged: 2019-07-03 03:38:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,438
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15810555
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Catznetsov/pseuds/Catznetsov
Summary: “You know, um, Nate?” Braden says.“Nate who is sleeping in our spare room?” Philipp says, dry. “I’ve heard of Nate.”Nate, not opening his eyes, shoots Braden a thumbs-up.“Yeah. He’s not feeling so hot,” Braden says. Sometimes Braden makes bad choices. “That’s … I mean, turns out he’s presenting. Omega after all. First heat, we just caught it.”





	Just a Taste

**Author's Note:**

> This is part of a shared ‘verse which will follow multiple storylines. Hop on over to Aetherseer’s Caught Off Guard to read the start of Jakub’s story or Ruin the Friendship for Chandler and Jay Beagle. The different series will be complementary but don’t have to be read in any order.
> 
> All characters in the ‘verse will be intersex, ie, with human sexual anatomy of various forms outside the typical definitions of ‘female’ or ‘male.’ These are not representations of all intersex people. My intention is to communicate the relevant details of sex acts for you in tagging, while resisting descriptions that gender/‘sex’-code specific anatomy.

 

July 1, 2017

 

It’s been forty-five mornings since Braden’s kissed his partner awake. That’s as good an excuse as any, but it isn’t very good.

“Hey, that paleta place, down by the grocery?” Nate says when he gets home from morning skate, sticking his head in from the hall. “Can we go?”

It’s only eleven-thirty; Braden’s not sure how he’s going to get through the afternoon if he’s hot already. But then Braden’s been at home wondering what to do with himself and not working through dev camp, and anyway he’s awful at telling Nate no.

“You want a ride?” he says instead.

“Nah, I thought we could walk down,” Nate says, tipping his head against the doorframe, contemplative. “Is it always like this here? I want tamarind. You can get mango.”

“Mostly. With chile, yeah,” Braden says, pushing partway up from the couch. Nate clicks his tongue appreciatively and bounces away toward the door.

“Give me five,” Braden calls after him, and then stares at his phone for at least three of them, waiting for it to show him something other than his crossword app running down the time and then the lock screen. The last time Philipp texted him to complain about his grandfather’s regressive dynamic politics and bad taste in music is blue against the background photo, and  somehow it’s only been half an hour.

Walks gets his ice cream. One of the tables outside the shop has been claimed by a beta in a blue print dress who is wrangling four children, and Nate beams down at them and doubles back to fetch ice water from the shop’s cooler for them. When his back’s turned, the beta turns a speaking look on Braden, and then the more eloquent eyebrows that say Nate is going to make a very fine alpha for someone someday.

Braden could do without the reminder that right now his best friend who hasn’t fucked off to another country or lost their head in wedding planning is a kid who hasn’t even presented yet. Hopefully his beard makes whatever his mouth does look like a proper smile.

“Alright. All set?” Walks says, reappearing at Braden’s elbow when he’s done. Braden quirks his mouth at him, but hands over the paleta Nate entrusted to him.

Nate looks _fine_ all the way home, and Braden will really fucking enjoy explaining that to the front office, after.

  
  


“Hey,” Nate calls, around five o’clock. Braden’s trying to remember whether he planned anything for dinner and a seven-letter word for a leader in the Episcopal church, but he stops when Nate stops there, as if he’s forgotten when he meant to say.

“Nate?” Braden checks, glancing into the living room. Nate isn’t immediately anywhere, until Braden steps out a little further and finds him sitting on the staircase between the two rooms, listing a little, like he was coming down from his room to ask Braden something and then gravity snuck up on him.

Braden looks down at him. “Hey, Nate,” he says. “How’re you doing there?”

“It’s like, really hot,” Nate says. His hand is resting on his stomach, thumb lifting his shirt like he can’t decide if he wants it off and just circling instead.

“It does that, yeah,” Braden says, and Nate squints at him.

“No, like, yesterday was really hot,” he says. “It’s like, _really_ now.”

Yesterday was better than half the days Walks has been here. Braden had worn jeans and Nate had spent the afternoon lying out in the backyard with a novel over his face, which at the time Braden had thought was just from fighting hard for his place at camp, and felt maybe a little too proud about.

He crouches down to look at Nate on the level. Nate pushes himself back to sitting upright easily enough, and then he tips, inevitably, over to the other side. Braden puts out both hands to catch Nate’s shoulders. “Woah,” he says, trying for soothing on instinct, and that’s the mistake.

It isn’t that hot, but breathing around Nate is like the blinding air off blacktop. Braden blinks against it, breathes in again, and then the taste hits his tongue and the back of his teeth.

“Oh,” Nate says, suddenly awake, which might be ironic because Braden’s feeling a little faint. “You probably shouldn’t.”

“You’re in heat,” Braden says. His voice comes out rough and slow and stupid, and he shakes his head. “Ah, Jesus. You’re going into heat?” Just saying it his mouth clouds with smoky, warm salt scent.

“Gone, I think,” Nate says. He’s staring fixedly down at Braden’s hands, still on his shoulders, and he sounds more lucid and less happy about it, before he rallies and tips a sunny smile up at Braden. “Had to sooner or later, and I had to go late I guess. I think I’m gonna need to head back upstairs, yeah?”

Braden licks his teeth, bares them just a little. He shouldn’t, he knows it’s a scenting instinct and it’ll only make the taste stronger, but he does it anyway. Nate’s still smiling up at him, which means Braden can look down and see his eyes, that dimple at the left corner of his mouth, the one that gives Braden more trouble than the right one because it would be dreamily easy for him to reach out and touch.

“Mm,” he says.

“Just like, for a little while,” Nate says. He shifts a bit to get his feet under him, hands solid on the bed of the step, and pushes up experimentally. Braden’s hold tightens on his shoulders, maybe less like help and more like pulling him up.

He stops before he starts pulling in, but then he’s just standing there, holding an unexpected newly-presenting omega by the collar of his t-shirt, which he really shouldn’t be, except that if he lets go now Nate will fall.

“Hey, hey,” Nate says. “S’all alright, yeah? We’re alright.”

“Sorry,” Braden says. “I—sorry. I’m freaking out, aren’t I?”

“No worries,” Nate says, eyes falling closed. He doesn’t sound like he’s reassuring Braden anymore, which he doesn’t need now on top of everything. On the other hand, if he’s not trying to be reassuring that means he’s a little less on top of the situation, and oh, that hand is still spread across Nate’s shoulder blades, and Braden should not be doing that.

Nate takes a little breath, meditative. His mouth slips open, so Braden can just see the slick inside of his lip, his teeth, and then his pink tongue swipes across them, scenting. He lets the breath out on a sigh, lingering, the barest scratchy rumble-like purr. Braden knows that sound, because Braden’s an alpha, and Braden has a gorgeous omega partner of almost two years now who he’s starting to picture the rest of his future with.

“Hey, Nate,” he says, and Nate stirs, but only sinks in closer. “You wanna get upstairs?”

Nate rumbles at him.

“Walks. Hey,” Braden tries. “I’m gonna help you upstairs, so you can … rest up while I call your doc, yeah?”

Nate wets his lips again, but first one eye and then the other flickers open. “Oh,” he says. “Yeah, I guess that’s good. I keep …” he waggles a hand for the spells omegas tend to slip into as heat comes on, and wrinkles his nose.

“Yeah, I know. I’m just gonna … here,” Braden says, stiffly, feeling stupid, which is how he ought to feel after he convinced himself inviting a twenty-three-year-old to stay would go smoothly just because it hadn’t gone wrong before. Nate likes to joke about it but he's only a little late, and every year it didn’t happen made it more likely, not less.

Braden had hoped he’d be a beta. It wouldn’t have meant anything, really: nobody’s obligated to fall in together just because they’re all in the same place and they’d make a traditional trio. But it’s _acceptable_ for an alpha with a perfect omega partner to look for that third to bring home and offer to them. Philipp treasures the chance to travel home every summer, so he still hasn’t met Walks properly yet, and sometimes Braden’s thought about folding their hands together and stepping back. That’s the kind of hopeful gift of support and shared care that an alpha gets to give their partners.

But he might have dreamed about _this._

He gets a carefully clinical arm behind Nate’s back, guiding him to turn. Nate eyes the next riser but tackles it gamely, and Braden follows a step behind up the stairs. Once or twice Nate pauses, finding his center of gravity, and Braden’s face brushes a little too close to the back of his t-shirt, stark over his shoulder-blades, growing dark.

At the top of the stairs the railing disappears out from under Nate. He wobbles, giggles at himself, leaning back into Braden’s hands. Braden gives him a little reassuring squeeze around the waist, and Nate presses easily into it.

There’s no getting around the fact that Nate’s room is on the third fuckin’ floor.

“I’m gonna be real with you, bud,” Braden says, rebalancing him. “Now you finally got around to it, you’re still not exactly fast.”

“I’m doing my best,” Nate says with dignity. “You keep dropping me.”

“Well, you’re getting a little slippery,” Braden says, and adjusts his grip around Nate’s ribs where his t-shirt’s riding up over slick skin, aching hot under his hands.

“Fair enough,” Nate says, rushy and rumbling again.

It would feel so easy to let Braden’s head fall forward against Nate’s shoulder, so he doesn’t have to see or think about this anymore. “I would really like to know you’re settled and call your doc as soon as we can.”

“Room’s right there,” Nate says. He tips his chin, hair soft for a moment against Braden’s jaw and cheek. That’s _Braden’s_ room.

A shiver bolts down Braden’s spine. It’s pushy, which is just a stereotype, but Philipp rolls his eyes and says if Braden had a uterus that sometimes started yowling for attention he’d feel pushy too, and then usually shoves him down onto the couch.

He’s never offered an opinion on nesting instincts, just blown a sigh obnoxiously against the crook of Braden’s neck after, but then, you don’t need biological-determinist bullshit to explain people wanting a safe and comfortable space. Right now Walks is probably feeling about as vulnerable as he ever does, which isn’t much, but the thought still hits Braden in the stomach, tangled up heavy with wanting to _make_ someplace safe, right now, longingly.

Nate knows Philipp’s never given a fuck about that room as a nest. He has to know, or this would be unconscionably rude, and Nate has to be actually unconscious before he’s impolite. He’d looked at Braden sideways, once, the first time he needed to borrow some clean socks and Braden waved him in without thinking. But either he understood that Braden and Philipp have a perfectly fuckin’ good nest of their own or he’s got better manners than anybody Braden knows, or maybe both.

Nate loves this house, though. He likes the sunlight downstairs and he’d love the windows and the faint summer breeze in their room. It’s too easy to picture him warm in the big bed, quilt crinkled under his toes, happy, like when Braden gets to see Philipp easy in their nest.

It’s been too long when he says, “Sure,” and pushes the door open.

Dusk is just falling outside, casting faint blue shadows instead of the light Braden was just imagining and has to blink away. Under his chin Nate hums and bounces forward, out of Braden’s hands. He’s at the bed already, clambering into the middle and flopping back.

“You good?” Braden says.

Nate lifts his head from the pillow just to nod at him. “Here’s best.”

“Anything I can, um—”

“I like it here,” Nate says. “Wanna stay. Okay.”

“Okay,” Braden says, even though Nate’s barely using the question. He’s staying, one way or the other, but Braden wants him to know he’s wanted here, if he wants to be.

 _Welcome_ here. Fuck.

“I’m gonna go back down and … and call, and, you know,” Braden says, scuffing a foot on his own bedroom rug. And get the fuck out of this house, is what he means, before the next natural part of heat hits. Normally he might crash at Kuzy’s, but that’s not happening this weekend for sure, and Braden can’t bear to leave Nate alone. So he might be sleeping on patio furniture tonight.

“Can I have your phone?” Nate says

That, at least, Braden stops over before he pulls the phone out of his pocket. If Nate needs an iPhone for some reason he’ll push it on him, but at least one sensible piece of his brain is pointing out things like ‘what if I need to call the hospital for real though’ and ‘what about the pictures in my private folders.’

“Just wanna call Phil,” Nate says, falling back into the pillows. “Can you?”

“Oh—oh,” Braden says, and taps through to find that last message. Normally he texts before, but he thumbs at the phone until it starts to ring.

Philipp answers, barely laughing, like relief. Whoever he’s with might not be able to tell, but Braden is learning to hear it. “Braden,” he says. “What’s up?”

“You know, um, Nate?” Braden says.

“Nate who is sleeping in our spare room?” Philipp says, dry. “I’ve heard of Nate.”

Nate, not opening his eyes, shoots Braden a thumbs-up.

“Yeah. He’s not feeling so hot,” Braden says. Sometimes Braden makes bad choices. “That’s … I mean, turns out he’s presenting. Omega after all. First heat, we just caught it.”

Philipp hums concern, and there’s a little shuffling like he’s trying to check the time. “He is alright? You’re home, now, yeah?”

“Yeah. Yeah, got him upstairs, he’s in bed now, resting up a bit,” Braden says, and he feels it down to his toes when he gets an approving hum. His partner thinks he took care well. “He’s gonna be fine, but I guess he wants someone more … you know, to talk to. Right bud? He gave me another thumbs up.”

“Oh,” Philipp says. “Of course, here, let me—” and then returns after a moment. “Can you put him on?”

“Yeah. Love you,” Braden tells him, because that’s never been hard, not when Philipp offers things he’s objectively bad at—like talking to strangers—so easily, just because someone might need him.

Nate’s still flopped out on the bed, arm flung partly over his eyes, but he takes the phone eagerly when Braden waves it, bringing it to his ear and curling in around it to catch whatever Philipp’s saying. Then Braden has nothing in his hands, nothing to look at except the sprawl of Nate’s legs, whether his basketball shorts might be darker than before, whether that’s slick or shadow between his thighs.

“I’m gonna be just downstairs,” he promises Nate’s knee, which is the closest he can get to looking away. “Feel better. And just—just tell Phil if you need anything, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Nate says, eager like a sigh. Braden’s never heard his voice melt like that before, and then he covers the phone. “Oh. Yeah, Braden. Thanks.”

Braden nods, or tries to. He remembers the novel he’s been working through off the bedside table, and bolts for the safety of the wicker sofa outside.  


 

* * *

 

 

If Nate were gonna admit to dreaming about it, he would have wanted to be an omega like Philipp looks in all Braden’s pictures. Tall, for one, darkly cool with a sweet fade, as much influence in the room through calm as Ovi wields with warmth, and just incidentally, dibs on the best-looking alpha Nate’s ever known.

He hadn’t exactly been pinning his hopes on that.

“How are you feeling?” Philipp asks, practical and just a little gentle in his ear.

Nate says, “Philosophically shaken,” and corrects with, “Hot.” Everything feels muggy, the way Virginia gets in the intermission between summer thunderstorms, which he’s going to keep using as his excuse. At 2:30 he’d even checked the damn weather app on his phone, and just thought the meteorologists must be making wild guesses again when it predicted highs only in the 70s. Lying here now he can feel the touch of the breeze through Braden’s bedroom window, but it’s only tingling where it ghosts over his skin, not bringing the temperature down at all.

“It does that,” Philipp says, and Nate shuts his eyes again. He’s aware he’s kicking himself more than anybody else will, because they’re all nice and they expect him to make kid mistakes, but it would’ve been great to come off a little cooler. “Hurt at all?”

“Nah,” Nate says. “I don’t think, um.”

He doesn’t think this is quite pain. Maybe for normal folks it would be, but it just hurts like a workout, making noise in his mind. The muscles low and deep in his stomach are tight, calling out for attention, something to push back against. When he slides a hand down, just the faint weight and warmth over his stomach feels achingly better.

Five minutes ago Braden had spread a hand over his hip, a perfectly appropriate way to hold and help him up in the circumstances, and for a moment all Nate had thought was heat. The glow of it, caught where their skin met, a sweeping, stomach-flipping triumph in how he fit under Braden’s broad hands. He’s always kind of liked being small.  

Nate thumbs at the place and then pushes his own hand in and down, working the heel of his palm hard into the taut muscle just below his navel.

“Well it doesn’t feel great,” he says. “I kinda just want to get through it, though.”

He meant he doesn’t need to be told to try a Tylenol. He means that the thought of bearing this feels good.  

“I don’t even know what I, uh—” he says, and Philipp says, “It’s fine, we all need it,” a little distantly, which makes sense because he’s in Germany and because Nate only knows him from TV and Braden’s endlessly adorable Instagram stories. The cool touch to his voice makes Nate’s skin sing.

“What?” he asks, for clarity on that last bit.

“Oh. Sometimes we need to know someone’s there, whoever. Any omega knows what it’s like, so we all agree we just help each other,” Philipp says, and Nate thinks from the sound he must be smiling. “That’s you now, too. So you’ll be there for someone when they need you.”

Nate needs more weight on him, sudden. He presses his palm down hard until he can’t, lifts and tries again, kneading in. Shifting helps and then doesn’t anymore, and then he thinks to lock his legs over each other and bear down.

He doesn’t think he makes a sound. His mouth is open, breathing hard but silent, and he can shape a gasp without giving it voice. The phone is lying on the pillow a few inches away, so he can turn his face into it, and he keeps his mouth open, taking careful panting breaths as he turns a little onto his side. His thighs slide over each other, the pressure shifting like a touch, and he has to rock into it again.

Nate’s always liked omegas. They’re just naturally prettiest, according to his twelve year-old self; they always know what people need and how to lead them, and they smell nice and make you feel like glowing when they smile. It hadn’t been hard to work out that he must like them like _that._ He knows they’re people with all kinds of faults and different, like everyone else, but a lot of the world agrees they’re wonderful, and what that means.

Eighteen-year-old Nate had been more rocked by how badly he’d _liked_ Braden. But then, that was ordinary too, if you were a beta.

So that was what Nate was going to be, and maybe one day he’d find a perfect omega to tell him how things should be, and a big beautiful alpha, and that’s everything he can imagine wanting, so he’s never understood how he’s wanted more.

He’s wanted to be wonderful too, he realizes. To run his hands over an omega’s pretty face and feel like them, pressed together, revel in everything the two of them can share and adore their differences. He’s wanted an alpha to look at him like he’s better than any ideal.

His stomach says, _his_ alpha, and when he works his legs together again his mouth is open against the pillow, Braden’s scent rich on his tongue.

“Partners make it nicer,” Philipp admits beside him. “It’s … well. Most of us like having our people there. Knowing they’re there for us, can give us what we tell them to.”

Nate snatches his hand up from his stomach, shoves it down between his thighs to press harder. He runs this thumb in circles over his mound just to ground himself, but then he has to flex his fingers too and feels them hot against his lower lips even through the fabric.

“Don’t you have your—” he asks, and stops himself, because Braden just says he’s Philipp’s partner, not anybody’s alpha.

“I do,” Philipp says. “It’s good to have all your people around, just to know they’re yours, but yes. That’s good too, to have your own ….”

He pauses, and it’s just as Nate is anticipating, the image bright in his mind. He knows he makes some shallow sound.

Philipp says, “Do you want to call Ovi?” Because of course Braden has Ovi’s number on his phone, and Nate could have called it. “Or Jay. I can call?”

“No,” Nate says. “No, I don’t,” the determined clarity in his voice surprising him.

Ovi’s a generous stranger getting ready to get married, maybe, and Jay’s like an omega out of Old Hollywood, perfect curves and a gracious kind of glamour. Everybody knows he has about a dozen suitors—even if he acts like they can call him anytime, it’s embarrassing.

And Nate hadn’t wanted to hear easy reassurance from someone who talks to him like Nate’s dad. Nate could have called his own dad, or his mothers. He thinks. It’s not as if he doesn’t have fine motor control, he just can’t focus on anything long enough to keep his hands out of his shorts.

Nate drags his lip between his teeth. He wants to get back to that, the glowing heat of his own touch and someone talking to him, the world narrowed down and everything in order the way he wants it to be.

It was a bit high-handed to just decide, though. Even if people expect that of omegas.  “Do you need to go?”

“No,” Philipp says. “No, I,” like he’s mimicking Nate a moment ago. “Everyone—it’s late, I don’t have to be anywhere.” It sounds a little distant, like he’s drawn the phone away from his face, and there’s a rustle of something.

Maybe he’s settling in his own bed—or, other. This one is too, and Nate’s well-settled in it. Nate’s in his bed and he’d feel apologetic except that Nate doesn’t exactly take up that much space, so if they were both here they’d fit, easy.

“You don’t _need_ partners. You know,” Philipp says. “But it’s good. Your partners, they’ll be the ones you can tell anything like this, and they’ll give you. They’ll want to try for you.”

“Like what?”

“Mm,” Philipp says. But it’s not as if he’s shoving Nate off, it’s questioning, soft like a thought, like Nate imagines it sounds when Braden kisses under the sharp line of his jaw to distract him. “Their hands, wherever you want them.  Down your back, low, where it makes you shake. Under your legs, your thighs. Their weight where you need it.”

Nate’s breath is dragging, open-mouthed. He hasn’t made a sound, he’s desperately sure, but Philipp has paused and he wants him not to. He wants what’s next, weight against him, between his legs, hands tracing the tops of his thighs. He wants to, but if he parts them now he’ll lose that pressure.

That thought makes him break the quiet, wordless, annoyed, and not pleased to admit it.

“Sorry, ah,” Philipp says, quick, or at least Nate thinks it’s something like that. “Just … just a moment. You want to … on your stomach, it’s easier.” Maybe he means what Nate’s thinking of, since there's only the little black phone next to Nate’s cheek and he can’t know what Nate’s doing. So—Nate thinks about it, sun-dazed: someone hot over his back, bearing down, holding his hips hard to the mattress so he can feel without having to move like this.

And, oh, that Nate can do, turning onto his belly as quick as he can, his own weight pinning his hand and grinding him into it. Like this his legs fall open without giving up that touch, and slickness slips down the insides of his thighs. When he rocks into his hand again he feels it paint his fingertips through the fabric.

His face is buried in the pillow; he remembers just enough to lift it, nuzzling for the phone and only settling when he feels its cool straight edge against the bridge of his nose. He works his cheek back into the pillow there, pleased, breathes so every now and then it brushes against his open mouth.

“That’s better first time, anyway. With someone, your alpha, they can make it easy like that,” Philipp says, as Nate kneads at his outer lips, fingers growing wetter. “We can’t always find for ourselves, but that angle’s good, to open easy.”

Now the fabric there is soaked, starting to catch and drag, sparking sensation over his clit. Is Philipp’s English slipping? Nate thinks his accent’s coming clearer, rising on the ends of words so they seem wondering, as if he’s dreaming.

“Yeah,” he manages, just for something to say, and then feels like he needs to say something more. “It’s not like—I’ve had sex before.” He’s had fingers inside him, a friend back in secondary school, kissed and played with the full bud that was going to grow into her alpha cock. He’d liked how it felt firm under silky smooth skin against his tongue, liked her thumb over his own alright, but hadn’t felt much more satisfaction than that she was already twice as long as his and beginning to swell below, while his cunt still looked as neat as it always had, so he probably wasn’t going to be an alpha. Now his stomach is kicking him at the thought, for not fully taking the opportunity of something in him. “I mean, I didn’t—”

Philipp laughs like he’s coughing, surprised. “Like it?” he asks, dry.

“It was alright,” Nate says primly, because his dad raised him not to kiss and tell, and more because it wins him another sharp laugh. “I didn’t—not like this. Want it,” and that last cracks, breaks open and spills hot, makes him shiver head to toe as if the word in the air is licking down his skin.

“Okay,” he hears, not quite conscious of it, “okay, okay,” as if Phillip’s pressing the grounding words against his mouth.

He needs to feel himself, shoving down his waistband, fingers slipping and sticking to the insides of his lips and thighs with the thick wetness until they find the part of his inner lips and slide in, almost as easy as promised.

“We want so much. But you can have it,” Philipp says. “You—your partner, they’ll give you. First time easy, but we still want it again, and again.”

“Yeah?”

Philipp says, “Yes,” in as proper tones as Nate just tried for, and he laughs and gasps as he drives his fingers deeper and the callus of his palm rubs over his clit. “What’s best … third time, when you’re ready and you want again, you can push your alpha down, tell him still, so he’s hard for you just from looking, touch everywhere you want to. So ready and he’s wet from you last time, you can kneel over and take him inside.”

Nate licks at a crack in his lip, dry from fighting to breathe quiet, and the wet sound of it is like the ones as he lifts his hips from the mattress to fuck onto his fingers again and again.

Is it stupid to say something just because he wants Philipp to know he’s here? Of course he knows, when he’s talking to Nate now, but Nate wants to know if he’s thinking about him like Nate is now.

‘Is that what you like?’ he wants to ask, that switch from polite to a particular pronoun rich in his mouth. It’s been like a month or something since Philipp slept in this bed: all Nate has is the deep, almost bitter scent of Braden on these sheets and the cold fucking phone and some half-baked fantasy of how the two of them must look, the long light lines of Philipp’s bare back over him, Braden’s hands cradling his jaw, dragging their dark heads in to rest together. Nate wants to feel someone’s breath like that, answering him.

But they aren’t talking about Braden, or if they are, if Philipp knows about his helpless crush, they aren’t talking about it, because you don’t just talk to anybody about your partner like that.

“Work like that as long as you need to, long as you want,” Philipp keeps on. “And he tries to be so good under you, not to break just from looking up at how pretty you are, because he thinks the best is giving everything you want.”

And Nate’s decided he isn’t talking about it, so it’s alright when his breath seizes and the growing light blooms in his stomach, when his muscles work without him, tight around his fingers, dragging fiercely hot, when he’s thinking about Braden’s eyes on him, bright with awe.

Philipp’s telling him it’s alright again, it’s okay, okay, against his cheek. Philipp is being generous, looking out for him like this and not talking down and so lovely, and Nate thinks it’s all alright as long as he doesn’t know about the stupid things Nate wants, because Nate will never, ever risk acting and hurt him for them. Right now, curled with their quilt and pillows on their bed, it feels like the warmest possible thing. Nate is going to make sure they’re happy, perfect and safe together.

He knows he’s crying out, little hitching sounds, and Philipp answers him back, maybe soothing words or just sounds until the feeling ripples out and sinks and Nate feels entirely soft.

Turning onto his back again now, he can feel the the breeze through their bedroom window, kissing his skin again. The temperature hasn’t come down at all.

“Sorry,” Philipp says, after a long time. It’s sudden, as if he’s forgotten and just now remembered something, but Nate can’t imagine what. “You should try to sleep, if you can. You—usually we want a lot, the first time. Every couple hours, or more.”

Nate makes the complaining sound he’s perfected for upper body drills.

“When you wake up, there’re my things, in the drawer,” Philipp says. “I’m—”

“Yeah?”

“You should sleep,” Philipp says, softer than anything against Nate’s skin. Nate hums something back.

He stays on the line long enough for Nate to nose around for the phone, remember how his hands work and bump at the screen until it lights up, the little green call light still showing. Nate swipes it carefully off.

He falls back, phone to his chest, blinking up at the ceiling and feeling them starting to slow.

Tomorrow will be exhausting, or more likely the next day, if this feeling lasts and he has to put off making travel plans for leaving after camp and contacting everyone.

The Bears’ve all been betting V will be the one who makes a drama of Presenting, whether he accidentally marries a stranger or tips Maddy over on the same day. Nate was supposed to wait until he’s thirty or something and notify everybody via text, with responsible capitalization and periods in all the right places. He still has to, probably; there are expectations.

That thought’s reassuring, suddenly. No one has noticed his bad choices this far, and no one has to.

  
  


  



End file.
